A Normil Day

Rick Normil

When your alarm clock turns into a frog, you know it's going to be one of those days.

I'll say this, though. It woke me up. The alarm clock went ZEE ZEE ZEE croak? with the croak coming right as I tried to hit the snooze and got a handful of amphibian. At which point it pissed itself and jumped off the bedside table. I pried my eyes open and looked at it.

Green. Wet. Google-eyed. A bona fide frog.

Which meant no snooze button. Which meant, much as I hated the fact, I had to be up. I groaned, levered myself out of bed, and went into the bathroom.

I didn't feel like making a big deal out of the even larger bullfrog in the soap dish. Or the very large dragonfly which I thought might be my razor. But the toothpaste turning into a very small alligator just as I was trying to put the cap back on? That was a problem. A bitey problem.

I put a band-aid on my finger and looked in the bathtub. There was a medium-sized alligator in there. Possibly the bath mat.

Okay, fine. Didn't need a shower this morning after all. I splashed water on my face, dabbed myself dry with the Spanish moss currently hanging from my towel rack, and shambled in the general direction of my kitchen. Coffee. Coffee is coping. Coffee is love.

Unfortunately, the ongoing bayouification wasn't limited to my bedroom and bathroom. The cabinet that should have contained the Wheatie Flakes was full of angry eyes. I spotted a raccoon before I shut the door on it. The frying pan turned into a stork as I picked it up, so I decided not to even try for eggs.

I could pick up breakfast from the BreadCo on the corner, I decided. And coffee, since the coffeemaker appeared to be a beaver. Not quite yet, though; the last thing I needed was this stuff following me into a restaurant and freaking people out. I went to my door, got my paper, and settled down at my kitchen table to read it, propping my feet on the other chair.

There was a short, pregnant pause. Then the invisible force turned me into a frogman.

I sighed inaudibly and flipped straight back to the comics page. Definitely one of those days.

At least I hadn't been turned into an ape; as a black guy, I find that prospect more than a bit racist. Unfortunately, we do have a local gorilla-themed supervillain; fortunately, he's got lousy aim. And, right back to unfortunately, gorillifying the toy poodle that happened to be beside me added extra rampage to an already rampage-rich situation. It had pink bows on its ears. Ladies and gentlemen, my life.

There was a somewhat longer pause, and then a being popped angrily into existence at about standing-up eye level. I very deliberately didn't look up, but I could make him out in my peripheral vision. Sort of a three-dimensional caricature, with the head larger than all the rest of him, about two feet tall. White, wild-haired, middle-aged. Dressed like the Mad Hatter as drawn by what's-his-name, the original illustrator. And, of course, bobbing mid-air. He clenched his fists and said, "Aaaarrggh!"

People don't usually actually say aargh. It's usually more like rrrgh or nnngg. I turned the page.

"How? How can any being be so—so—so lumplike?"

I've had practice, that's how. The Does Not Compute was funny today; the Taft, as usual, wasn't. And I was still a frogman. If I went on like this, I was going to have to get my moisturizer out of the bathroom drawer.

My moisturizer was very possibly a lizard. Nothing is ever simple.

"Do you notice what's going on around you? Do you care? Is it physically possible to be so stupid—so incredibly stupid—to lack all curiosity about your surroundings? Are you brain-damaged? Are you drugged? Are you an inanimate object run by little human—toothed wheely things? Haven't you noticed something odd?" His voice cracked a little on the last shriek.

In the adventure strips, John Marvol was stranded in deep space and had just spotted a Jovian pirate ship. I skipped the soap opera comics; I can't stand 'em. Sports pages, next, and then I'd worry about the headlines.

It's slightly more difficult to make amphibian eyes focus on small text. Search me why.

The floating chibi madman said, "Can you even hear me?"

Yes, but there was no way I would let him know that. He was obviously trying to get a rise out of me.

And then I turned back into Rick Normil. "You know what?" Floating Hat Guy snapped. "Forget it. You're as much fun as a mnemocoprin, and twice as stupid. I'm going to find someone else to challenge. Possibly a different species. Perhaps someone more advanced than you, such as one of your—your one-celled green life-forms. Hopefully someone who shows some infinitesimal outward sign of whether they're awake or not!"

There was a small plib noise, as of an unknown being teleporting away without displacing very much air at all. The gravity in the room reversed itself, making everything but me and my chair crash to the ceiling. And then I was alone again.

I grinned.

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Author's note: If you liked this story, please remember to vote for it!  I'll update next Wednesday.